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Chief Reyes: We’ll “get to the bottom of this.”
At least ten city cops face potential discipline, and one has already left the force, after top brass discovered that they failed to file hundreds of incident reports on complaints, some as serious as domestic violence.
One officer alone, who has been on the beat since only 2016, allegedly failed to file at least 225 reports.
The officer, who faced “serious” discipline, according to Police Chief Otoniel Reyes, has since resigned. (WTNH reporter Mario Boone earlier Thursday first reported on Facebook about this officer’s resignation.)
His case led top cops to do a broader audit, which revealed that 10 – 11 officers have for years been failing to file required incident reports. Some officers failed to file a small number of reports; others failed to file 60 or more, according to Chief Reyes. So far none has matched the magnitude of the case involving the officer who has resigned, Reyes added.
“All of the officers face potential discipline,” he told the Independent. “We’re doing a full audit and are going to get to the bottom of it.”
This episode began about two months ago, when a citizen called seeking a copy of an incident report on a complaint he filed, Reyes said. The report didn’t exist.
That soon happened with a second citizen, in both cases involving a matter handled by the officer.
So cops did an audit of the officer’s work and discovered at least 225 cases in which he was supposed to file a report but didn’t, according to Reyes. Many of the cases involved minor alleged offenses like a stolen radio. But about half a dozen involved major crimes like domestic violence. So detectives separately reinvestigated those reports and obtained arrest warrants, according to Reyes.
The officer who resigned could not be reached for comment Thursday.
“I have no comment. I don’t want to get jammed up,” said an officer accused of failing to file multiple reports, who has decades on the force.
“This is an ongoing issue, and all the details are in the infancy stage,” commented police union President Florencio Cotto Jr. He added that the union “doesn’t comment on personnel matters concerning former employees.”
Reyes attributed the problem to a flaw in a software program the department adopted in 2014 to move to a paperless reporting system. Officers can now file paperless reports from the laptops in their cars. At the end of each shift officers are required either to submit reports on all complaints or to submit an “incomplete,” meaning a supervisor has authorized them to wait a day to file rather than earn overtime pay to write up a minor incident, Reyes said.
The 10 – 11 officers under scrutiny here allegedly violated that policy by simply not submitting any reports or any “incompletes” into the system.
The software, produced by company called Sungard (since purchased by a company called Central Square Technologies) offers no manageable way to track officers’ reporting in these cases, Reyes argued. He said his department is now working with the company to seek an upgrade that will streamline the auditing process. The company asked the NHPD to find other local departments facing the same problem; Reyes said his team has already located a couple.
One neighboring department, Hamden’s, uses software from a different company, called NexGen, according to town Police Chief John Cappiello. He said he has had no problems with it.
Central Square did not respond to a request for comment for this article.
Meanwhile, New Haven’s internal audit of officers’ reporting continues, according to Reyes.